Tissue Engineered Textiles: ‘Can the integration of textile craft with tissue-engineering techniques lead to the development of a new materiality for future design applications?’

As early as the nineteenth century scientists were considering the idea that we would be able to manufacture with living materials. What was once seen as a radical notion is now being made a reality in laboratories around the world and is drawing ever greater interest from designers as they realise what the potential offered by biotechnology could mean for future products, as well as regenerative medicine. This thesis presents an insight into how the integration of textile craft and tissue engineering techniques can lead to the development of a new materiality for future applications in both design and science.

This PhD investigates one biotechnology in particular, tissue-engineering, and its impact on how and what we may design in the future. Tissue-engineering is a field that combines multiple disciplines including biology, engineering and material science. The aim of the field is to repair the body, by either improving or replacing parts. As a discipline, tissue-engineering is involved in trying to replicate and engineer structures found within the body, as a result those who design scaffolds need to have an understanding of form and architecture. Through experiments carried out in collaboration with the Tissue Engineering & Biophotonics laboratory at Kings College London, the research has produced scaffolds that demonstrate how cells can use textiles as cues to orientate themselves, how to direct that orientation and how to selectively control growth. The original contribution to knowledge in this research is the untapped possibilities within the realm of the bespoke, customised scaffolds. The PhD has explored the creation of hand-crafted, living, complex, dynamic architectures and utilising traditional textile techniques to produce a final collection of tissue engineered textile scaffolds. Alongside this, it presents new knowledge through the creation of a Materials Archive that provides a resource for future designers working within this emerging discipline.

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